AI execs used to beg for regulation. Not anymore.

Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, warned at a Senate hearing that requiring government approval to release powerful artificial intelligence software would be “disastrous” for the United States’ lead in the technology. It was a striking reversal after his comments at a Senate hearing two years ago, when he listed creating a new agency to license the technology as his “number one” recommendation for making sure AI was safe. Altman’s U-turn underscores a transformation in how tech companies and the U.S. government talk about AI technology. Widespread warnings about AI posing an “existential risk” to humanity and pleas from CEOs for speedy, preemptive regulation on the emerging technology are gone. Instead there is near-consensus among top tech executives and officials in the new Trump administration that the United States must free companies to move even faster to reap economic benefits from AI and keep the nation’s edge over China.